An Irish car fan has secured one of the coveted Ford retro-1960s GT supercars. Priced at over £100,000 in Britain, when it arrives in Dublin the cost is likely to exceed €220,000.
The new owner is confident it won't be losing value in the coming years. "Cars like these are built in such small numbers that they really retain their value," he told Motors.
Last August, the first of the 4,500 production GTs fetched over €500,000 at a California charity auction. In February a Ford dealership in South Carolina ran an online auction of the GT it had been allocated - the winninf bid was $90,301 (€73,500) and that's before the purchase price.
Despite the cost, the Irish applicant has no intention of mothballing his prized possession. "I'll be driving it on the road and will probably clock about 1,000 miles a year. Already I'd do about 800 miles a year in my Ferrari 360. Only last Sunday I was going to use it to run down to the shop and get the papers but it started raining so I decided against it."
The Dublin-based motorist, the only one of six final-round Irish applicants for the GT, has a classic collection including a Bentley Continental, an Aston Martin DB5 and several Mercedes SLs. He will collect his GT at the end of the year or early in 2005 from Fort Motors in Walkinstown, Co Dublin.
"I've always had a love of cars and read about the Ford GT when I was going on holidays," he says. He joined the 2,000 other European applicants filling out online forms on a special Ford website. Only 103 were successful - 28 going to Britain and one to Ireland.
The GT supercar harks back to the Le Mans winner and Ford icon, the GT40. In 1963 Henry Ford II bid for Ferrari but was turned down by Enzo Ferrari, who took a dim view of US motors. An angry Ford decided to hit him where it would hurt: he'd build a car to redden Ferrari faces at the Le Mans race.
The GT40 arrived in Le Mans in 1964. After two years of technical problems during which it failed to finish the race, the story goes that in 1965 Henry Ford called a meeting of the project staff. He handed them gold pins, which said "Ford Wins Le Mans, 1966." The message was: make it happen.
The Fords finished one-two-three, and won the next three Le Mans in a row. Ford's son, Bill, was looking for a special car to celebrate the company's centenary. The result was the Ford GT, one of which will soon be seen on Irish roads.
The Irish owner has no intention of taking his GT on the track. "I do some racing but you couldn't take this car on the track for fear of going off." It's 5.4-litre supercharged V8 engine offers 500bhp. The 0-60mph time of 3.3 seconds. Top speed is over 190mph.
The cars come in three colour schemes - white with blue, blue with white and the Gulf colours. "I haven't had the chance to order it yet," says our man, "but I'm going for the white with blue."